What a cracking last line! Poor Dex, indeed! Ah, I could understand Leona's frustration, knowing that so many lives now rest in her hand. LOL at her reaction when told Qui-Gon would be going with her. She does have a challenge ahead, considering how many people will die if she doesn't find a cure.

Well done, Ish.

Heehee. I was so ridiculously proud of that last line, but it came to me while rereading TLST the other day when Dex was sprawled with a compound fracture and still getting all randy toward Leona. I figured that she would have that wry kind of perception after that of his hormones. She does have a long and wearisome road ahead of her.

"The good news is that you're not up-to-date on all your vaccinations," Dimallie announced as she entered the room.

"That doesn't bode well for the bad news," Qui-Gon observed wryly.

"The bad news is for Padawan Caderul," she announced, stepping aside to reveal a fairly trembling thirteen-year-old with an armful of syringes. "It's her first time."

Fearing that this was, in fact, not a cruel joke born out of Dimallie's nearly-nonexistent sense of humor, he turned a pleading glance on her.

"And she'll be handing the syringes to you before you hand them to someone who's hit the mark on the first try before, right?"
"Don't worry," she said with unnecessary cheer. "Most of them don't require a particular vein, so she can just aim for anywhere on your..."

She gestured vaguely, inspiring a sharp decrease in his confidence.

"Oh, Sithspawn," he groaned, half-cursing and half-identifying the origin of his travel-sized tormentor.

"I'm not letting you do this!"

Her sentence had been cut off, unexpectedly, by an uncharacteristic outburst from An-Paj.

"Oh, Sith," Qui-Gon mumbled. "Jemmiah's in for another checkup, is she?"

"Healer P'lila, actually," Dimallie corrected.

"I thought her exam was yesterday," he observed idly.

"It was," she supplied, "but she has a few last-minute details to take care of."

Perhaps I can beg my way into enlisting her services.

Apparently, An-Paj's scruples had gotten the better of him, since his voice was now at the maddening level where they could all hear that he was speaking, but would require a longer hearing range to understand any of it. Against his better judgment and probably in opposition to his survival instinct, he stretched out with the Force to enhance his hearing.

This is for the good of the mission. I need to know if she's unwell.

"...Too dangerous," An-Paj was saying. "We don't know the extent of the problem and until we do, I can't have you taking unnecessary risks."

"This is hardly unnecessary," Leona snapped, "and you know that you would do the same in a Coruscant minute if you were given the chance."

"It's foolishness," he diagnosed.

"It's motivation," she countered, "and it will make sure that we won't fail."

Whatever "it" was never became clear, since the next noise was of her rapid footfalls approaching. He shut off the enhancement, then looked up to smile hopefully at Leona as she entered.

"No," Leona said brusquely, "I could use a bit of entertainment and seeing a grown man cry always seems to suffice."
*****
"I still don't understand why you have to pilot," she protested as they settled into the shuttle's flight couches. "I'm perfectly capable..."

"Stars, woman," Qui-Gon grunted unhappily. "Are you going to argue all the way to Corellia?"

She rolled her eyes, but they at least started to soften. "If necessary," she explained. "Now, why aren't you letting the superior pilot..."

"Because this one has better padding."

At her confused gesture, he pantomimed the enthusiastic stab that he had suffered only a few hours back. This elicited a further roll of the eyes.

"It wasn't that bad," she protested.

"Not the vaccinations themselves," he conceded, "but the third time she broke a needle off while trying to extract it was a bit much."

She actually managed a sympathetic grimace, but did not apologize for her foul mood. "All right," she conceded. "We'll let you be the crycrecheling today."

"Thank you," he said graciously.

A long moment passed as he guided the shuttle into the air, moving in a controlled pattern around the traffic that never ceased in this area of Coruscant.

"I'd have thought you would be pleased," he added a moment later.

"Hmmm?" was her only response. "How do you calculate that one?"

"Well," he responded with a smirk, "this means you have to tend to my posterior on a daily basis. Given that it's your favorite area..."

"No," Leona said brusquely, "I could use a bit of entertainment and seeing a grown man cry always seems to suffice."

ROFLOL! Spoken like a true healer! And naughty Leona too, making that remark about her posterior! Lol at Obi-Wan coming to grief whilst studying. And yes, if Mace did find out that the Bel Ethri and Bel Asha families were in some way related it would make his hair grow back in shock!

"No," Leona said brusquely, "I could use a bit of entertainment and seeing a grown man cry always seems to suffice."

ROFLOL! Spoken like a true healer! And naughty Leona too, making that remark about her posterior! Lol at Obi-Wan coming to grief whilst studying. And yes, if Mace did find out that the Bel Ethri and Bel Asha families were in some way related it would make his hair grow back in shock!

LOL, that's one side-effect I'd never thought of. Leona does have her naughty side, it's to be admitted.

The man was, to his credit, looking appropriately nervous at the idea of being involved in a criminal investigation. He didn't have the customary bluster and hostility that most people adopted when dealing with Jedi.

"May I remind you that children are dying?" she continued in the absence of appropriate response.

He nodded slightly, unhappily. "That's not my holdup, love," he assured her. "The fact of the matter is that we only deal in corporate sales. The actual distribution is up to the individual companies."

"And how many corporate orders have you filled with the exact list of components?" Qui-Gon interjected.

"Only seventy-six," the man admitted, "but there's a separate possibility that if your quarry wanted to cover his tracks, he might have ordered from multiple distributors."

"Make it harder to trace," Leona agreed.

He scanned the list, frowning. "Blaming dying kids on this sort of concoction is bordering on a conspiracy theory."

"We considered that," she admitted, "and those who are still at the Temple are investigating that possibility, but the targets and makeup of the affliction are too specialized to suggest that it's not a manufactured."

He sighed, then glanced at the datapad. "If I pulled the files of all likely and unlikely suspects, it would take six hours just to get them filed and sent to you. Isn't there a faster way to figure this thing out?"

The alarm had been going off for the last three minutes and, while it was fine for Leona to get that extra sleep, it was hardly fair of her to simply leave it on while she stuffed her head under the pillow.

"Leona," he said more loudly, "for the love of the Force, turn the blasted thing off and be done with it."

Still no response. Chancing her wrath, he opened the door and moved to the bedside table, shutting the alarm off and resetting it for a more reasonable hour.

To be more specific, four reasonable hours from now.

He turned to go, hand reaching out to smooth the hair back from her cheek...

And encountered something warm and liquid.

Oh, Sith.

He switched on the lamp, which usually made her cringe away from the brightness, even if she were asleep.

Instead, she remained limp.

There wasn't much blood, of that they could be thankful, but the cold sweat she had mentioned in other cases was present.

He normally didn't curse his ability to sleep soundly, but this merited an exception.

Oh, Sith.

His hand was now holding his commlink, but he couldn't remember having reached for it or dialing it to the local medcenter's frequency.

"We need transport immediately."
*****
He didn't know how long he had been in the meditation trance, only that he felt hardly refreshed when the medic lay a hand on his shoulder and informed him that he had a comm waiting from the Jedi Temple.

He followed the woman reluctantly into the medcenter's communications room, unsurprised to find that An-Paj had been the one to respond.

"You knew about this," was Qui-Gon's first accusation.

He had not identified the crisis, only had commed the Temple to say that Leona had taken ill and he required assistance. The man's pallor and grim expression were answer enough.

"I knew she infected herself," the man confirmed. "That is why we argued that last day. She was attempting to convince me to help her do so and I considered it an unnecessary risk. As it turned out, she had already done so, in which case I provided medicine."

"Medicine didn't work on the others," Qui-Gon retorted. "What makes you think..."

"I gave her hormonal suppressants," An-Paj reasoned. "While they could not cure the disease, I surmised that stopping the spread would be treatment enough for the time being."

"The time being what?" Qui-Gon shot back. "She's been unresponsive to stimuli, Force-induced or otherwise and the saving grace of this situation is that they may be able to put her in stasis."

"I'll be in contact with the medcenter there," An-Paj assured him. "Most likely, they'll have the proper medication to continue the treatment."

This was hardly satisfactory, but it was the best they could do for the time being.

The best they could say for her was that she hadn't lost any more blood.

She was either in a relatively ineffective healing trance or in hibernation, since they had found it unnecessary to put her into stasis, but she was making no improvement otherwise.

CorSec had graciously assigned something of an aide to them, since they were relatively unfamiliar with the bureaucratic proceedings of this world, but Qui-Gon had hesitated to use the young man's services except in matters of acting as a go-between for the government and Jedi alike.

Now that he actually required assistance, however, the man was nowhere to be found.

Nevertheless, he spent his days doing research on the trade agreements that they had found through discreet inquiries. Most of them were couched in other documents, more formal procedures of which business was a relatively minor aspect, and most were undeniably useless.

He needed to be back on the streets again, but he couldn't afford to leave Leona, no matter what her current stability was.

On the fourth day, he was awoken by a slight stirring in the bed next to his chair and he blinked fatigue from his eyes to find Leona regarding him hazily.